Ever since American Girl of the Year, Isabelle, showed up, my daughter has been salivating over the Sewing Studio. While putting one together didn’t seem too hard, I was really stumped on the sewing machine. The ones that I could find seemed ridiculously expensive and so we resolved to make one. Off to Joann’s and Michaels we went!
We used:
Crayola Modeling Clay
Small screw eyes
A tapestry sewing needle
Small wooden spools
Small wooden dowel
For the actual molding, I pretty much pulled up some google pics of sewing machines and let my inner kid out. After two tries, we had a reasonable sewing machine form.
I broke the wooden dowel at a long enough length to keep the form stable and still stick out (for the spool holder) and stuck it in.
I screwed in a screw eye to represent a threading arm, and stuck a thick tapestry needle in (upside down so that the eye would be able to be threaded and the pointed end was safely encased in clay).
It takes a few days to dry completely (package suggests 72 hours). One thing I noticed was that the back started to crack a bit. We filled in the cracks with regular Elmer’s glue and set it back down to keep drying.
When it was as dry as we could wait for (mostly hard, but felt like you could squeeze it if you tried) we took the screw eye out and painted it.
To decorate, we kicked around the idea of using buttons for the controls…
But then my husband printed out a couple sample pics for us to use as a design. We found one we liked, glued it on, and used a coat of clear varnish.
When it was all dry, we put the screw eye back in and threaded it up!
Finally, we had the last piece for our own version of an American Girl Sewing Studio, because, you know…we don’t have $300 lying around 😉
We used the Our Generation Wardrobe and filled it with odds and ends, both handmade and store-bought. The dress form, tiny clothespins, and mini yarn skeins are from Joann’s!
Hope this helps and feel free to contact me with any questions
